LONDON — Britain is still lagging behind Australia when it comes to assisted dying. But one Labour MP who has seen the debate in both countries is hoping she can push forward a thwarted attempt at change in the U.K. Edwards’ support for assisted dying is shaped in part by the laws in Victoria, where she still has family.
In 2017, it became the first Australian state to legalize assisted dying for people expected to die within six months, or 12 months for those with neurodegenerative diseases, and who face unacceptable suffering. Though Edwards argues her own legislation is “preferable and has stronger safeguards” than the Australian model — unbearable suffering is not a criterion for eligibility in her bill — she found it helpful to see how assisted dying has worked in practice the last time British MPs tackled this issue. It’s an experience from which many in Labour still bear the scars — and on which new Prime Minister Andy Burnham already appears to have drawn a line in the sand.
MPs passed fellow Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill last year by 314 votes to 291. But it failed to become law after delays in the U.K.’s House of Lords. Now Edwards is reintroducing the bill — and is adamant that the groundbreaking social change can succeed this time around.
It means that next month, the House of Commons will once again be thrust into a divisive vote on a matter of conscience, deciding whether to legalize assisted dying in England and Wales for terminally ill adults judged as having fewer than six months left to live. The situation reassured her compared to “more extreme examples” like Canada, where a terminal condition is not required for patients to be eligible, but instead an irreversible, “advanced state of decline” and “unbearable physical or mental suffering.” Next year, Canadian eligibility for assisted dying is set to be expanded to include individuals whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness, though this change has been repeatedly delayed. Sense-checking the legislation with family down under was “really important” when weighing up whether to support Leadbeater’s earlier proposals, she says.
Edwards has Australian friends who have settled in Britain too — and contrasts a friend able to attend his mother’s assisted death in Australia with British families currently worried about prosecution for helping relatives to die. U.K. law punishes the offense with up to 14 years in prison. It is not benign,” Edwards argues.
However, access to assisted dying varies across the vast state — which is only slightly smaller than the entire U.K. — and just “a few practitioners” deliver the majority of care. Victoria has been urged to press the central Australian government for more funding. Back in the U.K., the main political parties have agreed that the decision to legalize assisted dying should be a matter for parliament, rather than any one administration.
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